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Technology Stocks : Netscape -- Giant Killer or Flash in the Pan? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Uncle Frank who wrote (3004)	5/4/1998 4:37:00 PM
From: Jeff Mills	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4903

I agree--NSCP is making a big move toward internet commerce, away from software. $35 this week. JM

To: Uncle Frank who wrote (3004)	5/9/1998 9:03:00 PM
From: Chet Sehgal	Respond to of 4903

Poker face negotiations. You've got to admit it. Netscape has an admirable penchant for making the other party feel like an underdog during negotiations and forcing it to make hasty and at times not very favorable decisions. When in reality it may not be the case. Take the Kiva Software's acquisition, as an example. Netscape knew they had to quickly diversify. Microsoft was threatening to bulldoze through their browser dominance so Netscape was looking into acquisitions to bolster their enterprise software business. On the other hand, Kiva could have gone public on their own and judging from their product portfolio Wall Street should have reacted quite positively. In the end, Netscape aura seems to have prevailed and they acquired Kiva at a bargain price. Good for Netscape. There was another cause for concern to Netscape. In the past, Netscape's site was the most heavily trafficked site on the internet. There were a number of reasons for that. They dominated the browser market so folks kept polling their site for information about latest releases and to also download existing versions. Also, there were not too many other well known sites on the internet so it was the portal site by default. None of this is true any more. We all know how Netscape's browser share has eroded. Popular search engines like Yahoo, Infoseek, Excite and others are now becoming logical gateways to the internet. So the traffic to the site had got to be thinning out. This may have put them on the defensive in their negotiations with Excite. Clearly, Netscape needed Excite more than Excite needed Netscape. Not so. The way I read the deal, Excite is going to improve Netscape's site so that Netscape's site can attract more traffic, increasing the opportunity for Netscape to make more money. And it is paying Netscape for this - $70 million to be exact. Excite is obviously betting it will gain more brand visibility and increase its opportunity for advertising revenues. Which is probably true. But with the deal which involves an up-front payment and a much improved web site in the making which is bound to attract many more hits, Netscape has already gained. Talk about poker face negotiations. Chet